It may not surprise you to find you that I have been doing lots of holiday baking since Black Friday. Honestly, I wish I could be doing more. I had so many fun decorated cookies in mind for the holidays, but I don’t have time to do them all.

Despite that, I did find time to make some holiday wreath cookies using my favorite piped flower techniques. Really, they are no different than these floral letters I made for Fall or for Mother’s Day. I love making cookies like this using piping tips because they look very elegant and detailed, but you and I know that they are actually pretty easy!

I used the same techniques to add a flower garland to a Christmas tree and to add flowers around a royal icing banner. Piping tips are so versatile and make the cookies look professional.

The piping tips I used for these cookies were:

#14 and #24 to make roses,

#74 to make the large leaves,

#379 to make the small leaves, and

#16 to make the green star-shaped filler

For some of the cookies, I added some dots just for a bit more color and texture, but I didn’t even bother with a piping tip for those, as a zip-top bag or piping bag does the job.

There are so many fun things to do with piping tips and they are one of my favorite tools to use to decorate cookies. As you can see, they are actually pretty easy to use if you use the right consistency of icing.

Anytime I use piping tips, I use a stiff consistency icing. That means the icing is very thick. When I mix up my icing, typically I add some water to thin it down. For stiff consistency icing, I barely add water because I want the icing to form a stiff peak when I lift the spoon up from the surface.

That ensures that all those little details from the piping tip stay put and don’t settle into a blob of icing.

What is your favorite holiday cookie? Mine is gingerbread! To me, gingerbread cookies signal the Christmas season. I rarely have a gingerbread cookie between January and November, so their deliciousness reserved for that very specific time of year when my stepmom makes loads of her famous gingerbread cookies.

This year I made it my mission to perfect my gingerbread cookie recipe. I made cookies last year that were good, but not good enough in my opinion. So I took a couple lessons from my stepmom’s recipe and completely reformulated the recipe. And by that, I mean that I just changed the measurements of a couple ingredients. But it sounds pretty impressive when I say “reformulated”, doesn’t it?

Oh yeah…and I made a video!

What is a bit different in these cookies is that I used both baking soda and baking powder. I didn’t want the cookies to be so hard you would break your teeth, but I also didn’t want them puffing up and spreading out so that when I baked a gingerbread man he would end up looking like the State Puft Marshmallow Man. The combination of the two makes these cookies rise just enough that they are super soft right out of the oven. Even after a few days, they are still nice and airy and not as hard as a rock.

The other trick to getting soft, not super crunchy cookies is to roll them out rather thick. Of course, I use my favorite rolling pin bands to ensure that my cookies are all about 1/4″ thick.

After all is said and done, these cookies turn out to be perfect (in my opinion). Super flavorful without being spicy. Slightly soft without losing their shape. They are perfect for decorating, but also don’t need a lot of decoration if that’s not your jam. You can just dust them with powdered sugar or sprinkles and call it a day.

What I am saying here guys is that YOU NEED TO MAKE THESE COOKIES!

Sorry for yelling, but it’s that important to me. If you like gingerbread or know someone who does, this recipe is for you! Consider it my early Christmas gift to you. 🙂

The Best Gingerbread Cookies

2017-12-03 18:44:03

Yields 24

The perfect gingerbread cookies that are both delicious, sweet, flavorful, and soft yet hold their shape!

In a large bowl or bowl of a stand mixer, beat together the butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy. About 30 seconds to a minute. Mix in the egg until completely combined then mix in vinegar, molasses, ginger, cinnamon, and cloves until the mixture is completely smooth.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Gradually add the flour to the butter mixture. Mix until the flour is completely incorporated and the dough is tacky, but not overly sticky.

Form dough into a ball and wrap in plastic wrap. Flatten into a disc and place in the fridge to chill for at least 1 hour.

When ready to roll out and bake, preheat oven to 350 for a conventional oven or 325 for a convection oven. Line baking sheets with parchment paper and set aside.

Roll dough out on a lightly floured surface to 1/4 inch thick. Cut out into a desired shape. Place on baking sheet about 1 inch apart.

Bake for 12-15 minutes, or until the top of the cookies no longer shine and the edges have darkened slightly.

Let cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack. Wait until completely cooled before decorating with icing.

Raise your hand if you have ever had Panettone before? You know, it’s that fruit-speckled bread that they sell in the grocery store around this time of the year. You have probably confused it with fruitcake.

If I were Panettone, I would be insulted, because Panettone is actually good (seriously, someone tell me where to find a good fruitcake, because I surely haven’t found one).

It’s a delicious sweet bread that is flavored with orange zest and filled with raisins and other dried fruit. Guess what else would be delicious if it were flavored with orange zest and filled with dried fruit.

You guessed it! Cookies!

(I can turn just about anything into a cookie. If I were a superhero, that would be my superpower.)

And even better, they make excellent slice-and-bake which are great for the holidays. Just whip up a batch of dough, roll it into a log, then slice it up whenever you need cookies. But I am getting ahead of myself.

These Panettone slice-and-bake cookies get most of their flavor from a generous helping of orange zest. Like all of the orange zest. Just zest that puppy until there is no rind left. Don’t worry about measuring….it’ll be fine.

The orange zest is mixed with the butter, sugar, eggs, and vanilla. Then the flour goes in next.

Once the dough is pretty well mixed, throw in the dried fruit. I used diced up apricots and a dried berry mix that included raisins, craisins, and dried cherries. The apricots are a little stick when they are cut up, so toss them in a little bit of powdered sugar before adding them to the dough.

Mix all the fruit into the dough until they are evenly dispersed throughout. Then transfer the dough to a sheet of plastic wrap and roll into a nice log and find a nice place for it in your freezer.

If you want to bake these cookies immediately, well you can skip the slicing step and just spoon them onto a baking sheet. Or you can wait 30 minutes and slice them into 1/2 inch discs and pop them in the oven. You just want to wait long enough for the dough to be pretty firm so that it slices cleanly and easily.

Or you can leave the dough in there until you need it. I wouldn’t wait any longer than 2 weeks (make sure to wrap it up really well if you plan on keeping it in the freezer longer than a few hours) because then you risk the dough picking up any of that freezer stank or general freezer burn. But mostly the former.

Once these cookies come out of the oven, they will be nice and golden brown around the edges, but still nice and soft in the middle.

These cookies were very different than most cookies I make which are either just plain sugar cookies, loaded with chocolate, filled with caramel, etc. This is certainly the first cookie I have made that had dried apricots!

Which, by my estimation makes these cookies healthy! I’m sure you can get a full serving of fruit in if you eat enough of them (*Clearly I am not a nutritionist, so please don’t actually try to eat these cookies for their nutritional value).

Either way, make these cookies for the holidays in place of that dreaded fruitcake, or even in place of the much more appetizing Panettone. It’s like you made your very own Panettone loaf without all the hard work!

Panettone Slice and Bake Cookies

2017-11-30 05:57:59

Yields 24

An orange-flavored butter cookie specked with sweet dried fruits, just like the classic Panettone loaf.

In large bowl, beat together butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add in egg, vanilla, and orange zest and mix together until combined.

In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Slowly mix the flour mixture into the butter mixture until all the flour is just barely incorporated.

Fold the dried fruits into the dough.

Spread out a sheet of plastic wrap or parchment paper. Turn dough out onto plastic wrap and form a log about 1 foot long. Completely cover with wrap and place in the freezer. Allow to freeze for at least 30 minutes or up to several days.

When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Slice the cookie dough log into 1/2" inch slices. Place the slices on the baking sheet about 2 inches apart.

Bake for 10 to 12 minutes, or just slightly brown around the edges. Let cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack.

Thanksgiving was only a few days ago. Heck, it’s not even December!! But I have wasted no time getting into the holiday spirit. My Christmas tree is up! I have already checked a couple people off of my Christmas list, and I have done lots and lots of holiday baking (already!).

Actually, the holiday baking I have been doing has been recipe testing for my brand new Christmas Cookie Guide. Last year, I put together a very intensive post on how to decorate the perfect Christmas cookie. This year I wanted to create all-new recipes that will make your Christmas cookies stand out from the crowd!

For this guide, I created 12 brand new sugar cookie recipes (in addition to 3 of my classics). It includes recipes like golden chai-spiced, pistachio, Christmas spice, peppermint mocha, and Mexican chocolate.

Oh yeah…they are good.

In addition to that, I have added some flavor alternatives to the basic vanilla royal icing. These flavors will pair perfectly with all of the cookie recipes included in the guide. In fact, I tell you exactly how I would pair each flavor and cookie!

A couple weekends ago I put out an Instagram poll asking folks what I should bake over the weekend. Most people voted between pumpkin pie, apple pie, cookies, and Rice Krispie treats (so, just about everything I posted last week). One follower had a very specific request: Caramel Apple Walnut Oatmeal Cookies.

I mean, those just sounded too good NOT to make so I added it to my list of baking experiments.

Fortunately for all of us, they turned out amazing! Imagine a soft oatmeal cookie wrapped around a hunk of gooey caramel. Oh baby! Fresh from the oven, there is nothing better!

I started off by making a basic oatmeal cookie dough. But I replaced 1/2 cup of butter with shredded apple. To shred the apple, I took the apple straight to a box grater and grated it until I hit the core. The shredded apple adds lots of flavor, some moisture, and cuts out some of the fat from the butter! You could almost call these cookies somewhat healthy.

Except for that huge chuck of caramel right in the middle. That really negates any of the health-factor from the apples.

I scooped out balls of the cookie dough and stuck a caramel square right in the middle. Then I covered up the caramel with a bit more dough and rolled it into a ball.

After a quick stop in the oven these cookies are ready for the taking! I highly recommend only letting these puppies cool for a few minutes so that you can enjoy them while the caramel is still ooey gooey.

However, they are still perfectly yummy at room temperature, but the caramel will just be chewy instead of gooey.

If you don’t want one chunk of caramel in the middle of the cookie, you could instead add caramel chips. That was actually the original recommendation by the follower who posted this recipe idea. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any caramel chips and was too lazy to go to the store, so caramel squares it was!

It basically comes down to whether you want caramel disbursed throughout your cookie or one caramel center surprise.

There are no wrong answers. It’s caramel. And apples! And cookies! Those will always be the right answer in my book!

In a large bowl, beat together butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Mix in egg and vanilla until incorporated.

In a separate bowl, mix together flour, oats, spices, baking soda, and baking powder. Add the flour mixture and apple to the bowl with the butter. Mix until all ingredients are just barely combined. Fold in pecans (and caramel chips, if using).

Use a cookie scoop to scoop out 1 tbsp of dough. Stick an unwrapped caramel square in the center. Cover with 1/2 tbsp of dough. Form the dough into a ball and make sure the caramel is completely covered.

Place dough balls on a baking sheet 2 inches apart.

Bake for 15 to 18 minutes, or until golden brown. Let cool for 2-3 minutes, and serve while warm.

Halloween may be over, but I would guess you still have lots of candy left over at your house. The problem becomes, what do you do with all that leftover candy?! Except eat it, of course!

When I was a kid, my parents would ration my candy and let me have a few pieces here or there. Funny thing, though, somehow the candy stash didn’t last as long as I thought it would. I wonder where all that candy ended up, mom?

Now as an adult, I try to find ways to get rid of the candy as fast as possible because I know if it’s left around long enough, I will just eat it. For the past couple Halloweens I have tried to find ways to make other treats using the leftover Halloween candy. One year I made a Halloween candy bark, which was as easy as melting chocolate and tossing chopped up candy on top. Another year I mixed them into some cookie dough.

Surprisingly, there are lots of things you can do with leftover Halloween candy other than eating it. I found 10 that look really delicious and quite easy in case you are like me and trying to get rid of all your candy.

I look for any excuse to bake. I’ll sign up for any bake sale or office party potluck if it means I can bake something. I often use my Small Group and Book Club as unsuspecting guinea pigs for my new recipes. For instance, my Book Club was the taste testers for these brown butter chocolate chunk cookies. I knew they were a hit when i walked in with 18 cookies and left with none. There were only 6 of us. We each had 3 cookies.

Yes, they were that good! I couldn’t wait to share the recipe on the blog.

Brown butter is a beautiful thing! It’s just melted butter that has slightly….well….browned, which creates this amazingly rich flavor. The butter no longer tastes like butter. It takes on a nutty, toffee-like flavor that perfectly compliments…well…everything.

Brown butter can be used in place of normal butter in lots of different recipes. For these cookies, I mixed in the liquefied butter just like I would a stick of softened butter. My only tip is to wait until it cools just a bit. You don’t want to mix the eggs into hot butter.

Once the eggs vanilla, flour, and other dry ingredients are mixed in, it’s just like your average cookie dough.

95% of the time I would use chocolate chips in my cookies. 5% of the time I don’t have chocolate chips on hand. But it reminds me how great chocolate chunks are in cookies! There are small pieces that just mix right into the dough and the larger pieces that create melted pockets of chocolate all through the cookie.

There are two tips I have learned over the years to make excellent chocolate chip (or chocolate chunk) cookies. The first is to freeze the balls of dough before baking.

To accomplish this, I scoop out my dough on to a small baking sheet and then pop it in the freezer for 10-15 minutes.

Once they are frozen, I move them to a bigger sheet and give them a bit more space. Then pop them in the oven.

The second tip is to sprinkle the unbaked cookie dough balls with flakey sea salt. Seriously, if there is one thing you take away from this post its this! Sea salt and any chocolate chip cookie takes it to the next level.

Out of the oven they look fairly unassuming, like ordinary CCCs. But these brown butter chocolate chunk cookies are not ordinary. They are extraordinary! Rhe best part is, people won’t really know why they are different, but they will definitely taste the difference.

The brown butter clearly sets these cookies apart, adding a subtle nutty flavor. Then the large chunks melted chocolate lightly dusted with sea salt just push these cookies over the edge.

Promise me, just make them, give them to your friends, and then sit back and bask in the glory that will inevitably be rained down upon you.

Brown Butter Dark Chocolate Chunk Cookies

2017-10-27 05:03:26

Yields 36

A twist on the classic chocolate chip cookie, this one made with brown butter and dark chocolate chunks.

In a sauce pan over medium/medium-low heat, add the butter and melt. Allow to lightly simmer while continually swirling or stirring the butter around the pan so it doesn't burn. Once it comes to a warm chestnut brown color (about 5 to 7 minutes), take off the heat and let cool to room temperature.

While the butter cools, whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt then set aside.

In another large bowl, add the sugars and the butter. Mix together the butter and sugars until it forms a paste-like consistency. Do not worry if the butter will separate from the sugar while it sits.

Whisk in the eggs and vanilla until completely incorporated. Then slowly mix in the flour mixture.

Once most of the flour has been mix in, fold in the chocolate chunks.

Scoop the dough out onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Dough balls can be placed right next to one another. Sprinkle the tops with a coarse or flaky sea salt. Cover the baking sheet with plastic wrap and place in the freezer for at least 10 minutes.

When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Transfer the dough balls to another baking sheet so that they are 2 inches apart. Place in the oven the turn temperature down to 350. Bake for 15 minutes, or until they are golden brown around the edges. If you like soft cookies, bake for only 12 minutes, or until the edges look set but the middle looks slightly undercooked.

If there is one thing you can find in abundance on this blog, it’s sweets. And I don’t discriminate, I like sweets of all kinds – cookies, cupcakes, cakes, brownies, ice cream. But I do like balancing my sweet tooth with a healthy diet (most of the time). Sometimes I can have the best of both worlds and have my sweets but also be healthy.

Case in point: sugar-free sugar cookies.

Now, I know what you are thinking. How can you make a sugar cookie without sugar? While there may not be any refined sugar in these cookies, there are some all natural sweeteners (agave syrup and Stevia) in these cookies that give them their classic sweetness without the sugar rush.

In addition, the cookies are made with some whole wheat pastry flour which really amps up the healthy factor. Almost making these cookies guilt free. Almost.

These sugar-free sugar cookies already have the sugar-free thing and whole wheat flour going for them, but, in addition, they also use half as much butter as my classic sugar cookie. Thanks to the moisture provided by the agave syrup, you only need a half a cup of butter to make a full batch of cookies.

To make the cookies, I start by mixing together the butter, agave, and stevia. Then I add the egg and vanilla. After that, I mix in the whole wheat pastry flour.

You could also use plain all-purpose flour or normal whole wheat flour. Just be warned that by using 100% normal whole wheat flour you will end up with a distinct whole wheat taste. If that doesn’t bother you then go for it! If it does, I recommend finding some whole wheat pastry flour or white whole wheat flour or mix in half all-purpose and half whole wheat to still get the whole wheat benefit.

One great thing about this dough is that it can be rolled out immediately if you are short on time. But I prefer to wrap my dough in plastic wrap and to let it chill for about an hour before rolling it out. This not only helps the flour soak up some of the moisture, but it makes it a lot easier to roll and cut out.

Normally when I roll out my dough, I just roll it out right on my pastry board with a little bit of flour. But because this dough is a little on the dry side (whole wheat flour tends to do that) I want to use as little flour as possible. To roll out my dough without it sticking to anything, I roll it between two sheets of parchment paper and a tiny sprinkling of flour. Of course, I could do this with my normal sugar cookies, but I am just too lazy.

Then I cut out my cookies as normal and pop them in the oven to bake.

These cookies are perfect for decorating because they keep their shape really well, but are also really light and fluffy thanks to the agave syrup. For decorating these cookies, in keeping with the sugar-free theme, I made a batch of this sugar-free buttercream frosting. I did attempt to make sugar-free royal icing…but I am pretty sure that is impossible. You just need some sugar to make the icing work.

Full disclosure, though, the sprinkles are 100% sugar. I struggled to find any sugar-free sprinkles and decided in the end that cookies with 99% less sugar than a normal frosted sugar cookie is pretty dang good. Of course, if you are looking to eliminate all the refined sugar, you can just skip the sprinkles. Or make your own.

These cookies will be perfect for Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, you name it. You can frost them with sugar-free frosting, or use my favorite royal icing (which is basically pure sugar) if you are just looking to cut out a little bit of sugar.

I am so happy to have this recipe in my back pocket now. Next time I make cookies for my friends’ kids (or myself) I will certainly use this recipe to cut out some sugar and make my cookies a bit more healthy!

In a large bowl, cream together butter, agave, and stevia for about 1 minute. Add in egg, vanilla, and almond extract and mix together for another 20 to 30 seconds.

In a separate bowl, whisk together flours and salt to get rid of any lumps. Slowly add flour to the butter mixture in two or three batches, mixing in between until the dough forms a soft, slightly sticky ball of dough.

Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and place in the fridge for at least an hour to chill.

When ready to roll out the dough, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Lay a piece of parchment down on a work surface. Lightly flour the the parchment and place the dough on top, flattening with both hands. Sprinkle a bit of flour on top of the dough and lay a second piece of parchment on top.

Roll out the dough between the parchment sheets to a 1/4 inch thick. Cut out into desired shapes. Place cut cookies onto the baking sheet 1 inch apart.

Bake for 12 to 15 minutes, until the edges are lightly brown. Let cool for 5 minutes.

Notes

You can substitute honey for agave in the same proportions. You can also substitute liquid stevia for powder stevia in the same proportions.

This weekend, Billy and I are off to Waco for Baylor University’s Homecoming, where Billy and I both went to school. While I have been back to Waco quite a bit over the years, even since moving to Charlotte, this is the first Homecoming we have been back to in years. So it will be a lot of fun to see old friends and sorority sisters who I may not have seen in the last 10 years.

But it wouldn’t be an event if there I didn’t make cookies, right? Billy jokes that it didn’t happen if I didn’t put it on Instagram. Well, I think it doesn’t happen if I don’t make cookies!

The cookies were inspired by this print that I found on Etsy. I loved it so much I wanted to make it into a cookie! Since I am not artistic enough to hand draw it onto the cookie, I used the tracing method that I demonstrated here.

I used the same method to make the Sailor Bear cookies to keep with the watercolor theme. But I do think I like these royal icing Sailor Bears I made for the Cotton Bowl better. I made those using the royal icing transfer method, where I just trace over the image with royal icing.

To see how I made the Sailor Bear cookies, skip to minute 4:00 in the video. To see how I made the skyline cookies, skip to minute 5:27.

I’m giving away all my tricks, here. Now you know that I am actually not all that talented, I am just really good at tracing things with royal icing or a paint brush.

My favorite cookies of the entire collection are the B-A-Y-L-O-R letter cookies. Of course, I didn’t film these cookies because they were the last ones I made. After spending a few hours making the other cookies I was at a loss of what to do for the letter cookies. Should I just ice them in green and gold icing? Should I paint them? Should I try some fun new design? No, I decided to rely on an old favorite and paint a floral pattern very similar to what I did with these Pineapple cookies. Instead of using several various colors, I just used a couple shades of green and gold.

While Fall is one of my favorite seasons (who doesn’t love reprieve from the hot, humid Summer?), I still end September dragging my feet to get into the “Fall spirit”. But come October, and I am in the full Fall mode! In the last week alone, I have made four pumpkin spice recipes. This has got to be a new personal record.

These cookies are actually one of those recipes. On Tuesday I shared my pumpkin spice sugar cookies which are freaking delicious. They only deserve the best Fall decoration!

I mean, you can’t make pumpkin spice sugar cookies and not make them into adorably decorated pumpkin cookies, right?

You should know by now that I love throwing royal icing flowers on just about every cookie I make. They are fun way to really dress up a cookie. Plus people are generally pretty impressed with flowers on cookies (little do they know, it’s incredibly easy!).

I also drew inspiration from my own Mother’s Day cookies and made some floral Fall letters, which I love. Again, they look so intricate and detailed, but really the piping tips do all the work.

Speaking of which, these are the piping tips I used for the flowers and leaves (all are Wilton brand, most are included in this set):

#14 (Rosette)

#16 (Rosette)

#24 (Rosette)

#225 (Drop Flower)

#107 (Drop Flower)

#349 (Small Leaf)

#67 (Big Leaf)

I also used couplers along with my piping bags so that I could switch out my piping tips. For instance, on the pumpkins, I piped red rosettes, but on the letters, I switched to a drop flower tip. Couplers just make it easy to switch out colors and piping tips so you don’t have to have a million different tips.

Wouldn’t these be so great for Thanksgiving!? I also made a bunch of letters to spell out “Thankful”, which would be a really pretty display on a Thanksgiving dessert table.

Well, friends, if you are looking for some respite from the pumpkin spice overload, this is not the place. Today I am sharing my pumpkin spice sugar cookie recipe that is every bit as good as it sounds! (So good, my mother and law has already requested that her Christmas cookies are pumpkin spice flavored.) It’s my same favorite sugar cookie recipe spiced up with just the right amount of pumpkin spice.

If you have made my sugar cookie recipe (or any cookie recipe for that matter), you know that it starts with butter and sugar.

I like to cream the butter and sugar until it’s light and fluffy. Then I mix in the eggs and vanilla until the eggs are completely incorporated (and emulsified) into the butter.

To the butter, sugar, eggs, and vanilla I add in the flour and spices. Of course, most recipes will tell you to mix the flour and other dry ingredients together in a separate bowl. But I like to live life on the edge and just add them straight into the bowl with the other wet ingredients.

For the spices, I used a mixture of cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, ginger, and a bit of allspice. Then I mix everything together until it’s just combined! Once the dough is ready, I form it into a disc then wrap it in plastic wrap and place it in the fridge until I am ready to roll out the dough.

I find that rolling out the dough is so much easier when the dough is a bit stiff. The cookies hold their shape much better and are less likely to stick to counter.

While the cookies bake, they will fill your kitchen with the most wonderful smell. Think about how great your kitchen smells with you make normal sugar cookies. Then add pumpkin spice!

You don’t even have to decorate them, and I guarantee they will be a hit! But if you would like to decorate them, I will show you how I did it later this week! You can make them simple pumpkins or add some more fun details like burlap, flowers, and leaves. They are the perfect cookies for Fall!

Agates and geodes are just about everywhere these days. I see them as bookends, coasters (these particular cookies were inspired by agate coasters at West Elm), jewelry, and cakes. They are all so distinct and beautiful I knew I wanted to make them into cookies.

The good news is that these agate slice cookies are actually pretty easy to make! The cookie shape doesn’t have to be perfect (actually, the less perfect the better), no piping is necessary, and your lines don’t have to be straight!

Of course, I used my favorite sugar cookie recipe to make these cookies. I started with a circle cookie then tore off the edges to make that rough jagged edge.

Then instead of piping the royal icing on top, I actually dipped the cookies into the icing. Not only is it easier and quicker, I actually prefer it for this these cookies because the icing goes all the way to the edge and gets into all the little nooks and crannies along the edge.

Once the icing dried, I painted the cookies with food coloring gel diluted with a bit of alcohol (I used vodka, but you can also use almond extract) in various shades of the same color. So you can see I have a purple agate slice cookie with different shades of purple and pink, a blue in various shades of blue and turquoise, green in various shades of green and teal….you get the gist.

I finished off the cookies with a gold edge and a little bit of gold painted around the layers of the cookie. I think the gold really helps make the cookies look even more like an actual agate slice. What do you think!?

They are almost as pretty as those coasters, but better because you can eat it!

A little bit of my heart is in Houston. It was the first city I lived in all on my own with my own big girl apartment and my own big girl job. I moved to Houston after college to be close to friends. Not because I had a job offer; I found that later. I literally moved there because that’s where my best friends were going after graduation. It may not have been the most thoughtful or wise decision, but I don’t regret it for a single second.

I have so many fond memories of Houston. It is where I had my first date with my husband. Our second was at a Houston Astro’s game. It is where I lived with two of my bestest friends. Where one of those friends met her husband, and where the other one lives to this day.

Actually, the very first place I lived in Houston was in my friend’s parent’s spare room. Without asking any questions, or telling me how long I could stay, they put me up until I found my own apartment.

Houston may get a bad rap thanks to the weather, but its a beautiful city filled with beautiful people.

It’s also a BIG city. And I mean BIG. It’s not only the 4th largest city in the country in terms of population, it just downright takes up a ton of space. The entire metro area is over 8,000 square miles big!

When you hear about how much money it is going to cost to rebuild the city after hurricane Harvey (it’s billions with a B), that’s half of the equation. There is just so much to rebuild.

One of my not so fond memories of Houston was hunkering down during Ike, a hurricane that went right over the city. While there was a lot of wind damage, the flooding and total damage wasn’t nearly as bad as hurricane Harvey. Even then, I remember windows in the sky rises along highway 59 were boarded up for months afterwards. It took a friend of mine 2 weeks to get a tree removed from his living room and even longer to get his wall fixed. And Harvey is supposed to be at least 10 times worse.

I recently heard that the FEMA can’t even afford to make these people whole again. Some of them have lost their entire homes, their lives. And between FEMA and their insurance, they probably won’t receive enough to start over.

Which is why we need to help. If you don’t know where to start, here is an exhaustive list of 50 charities, organizations, foundations, etc. you can donate to. I promise, no matter how big or small, your donation will make a difference.

One of my favorite cookie decorating techniques lately has been watercolor on cookies. I really love the look of them, but I mostly rlove not having to make so much royal icing!

So with a good friends birthday around the corner, I knew I wanted to make some watercolor cookies for her. In looking for creative inspiration for her cookies, I came across a couple images that I absolutely adored! This sweet pineapple card and this beautiful pineapple print.

From there I was inspired to make these watercolor flower pineapple cookies!

To paint on cookies, you do need a few supplies you may not normally use during cookie decorating…mainly a big bottle of vodka (really any clear extract or alcohol will work, but I prefer vodka). It’s always amusing to my husband to see me painting cookies with a bottle of vodka next to me on the counter.

Peanut butter and pretzels. Chocolate and pretzels. Peanut butter and chocolate. All wonderful combinations on their own. So what could be bad about a cookie that combines all of them!?

I’ll tell you. Not a darn thing.

I told my husband that these cookies were specially created for him. He’s not a big cookie eater (it’s the only thing we ever bicker about), but he does love peanut butter pretzels. So I thought that maybe I could trick him into liking cookies if I also included peanut butter and pretzels in them!

Fortunately for both of us, my evil plan worked. He thoroughly enjoyed these cookies thanks to those delicious peanut butter chips and salty pretzels.

The obvious tweaks are the addition of the peanut butter chips and pretzels, which I mixed into the dough at the very end. However, there are also some not so obvious tweaks I made to this recipe. I added some extra brown sugar and an egg yolk to help make these cookies extra rich and soft. While I love a good crispy cookie, I wanted these cookies to be extra soft so that the crunchy pretzels really stood out.

I like to refrigerate my dough before I form them into balls and bake. It not only helps all the flavors meld together, but it helps the cookies stay nice and thick instead of flattening out into one flat disc.

If you like your cookies on the chewier side, remove the cookies just at the point the cookies are golden brown around the edges but still a bit soft in the center. They will continue to cook a bit after you take them out of the oven.

The resulting cookies are a little crunchy on the outside and soft and chewy in the center. As far as I am concerned, its the perfect cookie.

But seriously, this is a darn good cookie. How can you not like peanut butter, chocolate, and salty pretzels are packed into one little convenient cookie package? You can’t. I dare you.

Nothing like posting over 24 hours late (again). Game of Thrones has my Sunday priorities all messed up, guys. I may have spent all day making the ingredients for homemade s’mores so that I could post the recipes this week. But come 9:00 pm on Sunday night and my attention 100% belongs to HBO. But better, late than never, right?

Now I love graham crackers, but homemade graham crackers make the store bought version taste like cardboard. These homemade versions are so much richer and more flavorful and not quite as overly sweet like processed cookies tend to be.

Plus, you can make them in your food processor, which I love!

The hardest part of this whole recipe was finding graham flour. And by that I mean I didn’t find any graham flour. So instead I made my own by processing some wheat germ. Which also wasn’t easy to find. Quick tip, look for it near the oatmeal in your grocery store.

After chilling in the fridge for about an hour, the dough is ready to be rolled out. Graham crackers should be pretty thin, so I used the thinnest rolling pin bands to roll out my dough about 1/8th of an inch thick. I also uses a ravioli cutter to cut out my crackers into small scalloped squares. You could also use a pizza cutter to cut the dough into squares, or any shaped cutter to cut them into whatever shape you like.

On top of each cracker, poke a few holes so that they don’t puff up too much. Then sprinkle them with a bit of sugar.

Finally, bake them off in the oven until they are nice and crispy. Ideally, you won’t over bake them like I did. A few of them got a little charred. Fortunately for me, I like things that are on the burnt side.

Other than the ones that got a little extra toasty, these were some of the best graham crackers I have ever had. Like I said, there is just something about homemade graham cracker that is just so much better than the store bought kind (probably the freshness, lack of preservatives, ingredients you can pronounce). You can actually taste the subtle hints of molasses and honey.

Also, I love that they are a bit sturdier than the average graham cracker, making them ideal for some s’mores! Don’t you hate it when you are trying to assemble your s’more and your graham cracker breaks? Me too! I will be sharing more oh how I turned these grahams into s’mores this week! Stay tuned!

In the bowl of a food processor pulse together flours, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt until combined. Add in butter and pulse 10 to 15 times, or until it forms the consistency of coarse sand. Pour in milk, molasses, honey, and milk and mix on low until it forms a ball. About 30 seconds.

Form dough into a disc and wrap in plastic wrap. Let chill in the fridge for at least 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Roll the dough out to 1/8th inch thick on a lightly floured surface, or between two sheets of parchment paper. Cut out into even sized squares. Place on a baking sheet 1 inch apart. Use a fork or toothpick to poke holes in the tops. Sprinkle with sugar.

Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until the edges have turned a darker shade of brown. Transfer to a cooling rack and let cool for 5 to 10 minutes.

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Hey There!

Hey there, I'm Lindsey. I'm a number cruncher by day and a home cook and baker by night. While I love to eat healthy and find fresh and healthy alternatives for my favorite foods, I will never turn down dessert! Life is all about moderation, right?